Groomsman Proposal Boxes

Hey Guys!

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend! This week we are continuing with posts about the different proposal boxes for our wedding party! Today's post is featuring our Groomsmen Proposal Box. This was totally my idea, my fiancé thought it was kind of cheesy and I struggled with getting him to pick stuff out! But finally he did and I think that they turned out great. In total he has about 4 groomsmen and then his sister is actually his Best Woman! We didn't give her the best man box because we agreed to give her one of my bridesmaid boxes because she basically a bridesmaid just standing next to her brother on the day of the wedding! We both technically wanted her lol so she's participating in my bridal stuff and then depending on what he does she may participate in the bachelor party! And on the morning of the wedding she will probably be the first one to get her hair and makeup done just so that way she can go be with her brother and help him get ready and stuff! 

My Bridesmaid Proposal Boxes

Hey Guys!

Happy Friday! I hope you had a great week and enjoy your weekend! I don't really have any plans for the weekend except for school and wedding planning stuff mostly. My fiancé is gone pretty much all day during the work week since he works in office and so we try to get as much of our wedding planning that we need to get done together on the weekends. I also need to focus on getting as much school done as I possibly can before I leave for my trip with my parents and then my other trips I have coming up as well. I don't really plan on spending those weeks studying or doing any school work so I pretty much have to focus and cram in as much as I can. 

Summer 2022 Disney Trip

 Hi Guys!

Today's post is about my recent trip to Disney! I went for a long weekend for the last weekend in July. I flew into Orlando Thursday night almost Friday morning lol and then I flew home Monday night. I got to see my friends that I haven't seen in quite a while. Some of them I hadn't seen since November of 2020 unfortunately due to Covid, getting a new job and us living like 7 hours away from each other. When they told us about the trip I decided that I was going to go even though it wasn't really something I should be spending money on but three of them are my bridesmaids and two of their children are also in my wedding so I definitely felt like I needed to see them since it had been a while. Some of the kids barely even remembered me since it had been so long since I had last seen them!

Wedding Dress Shopping

 Hi Guys!

Happy Friday! I wanted to share a little bit about my experience going wedding dress shopping! First of all, I said Yes to the dress! It is my absolute dream dress and everything I could ever want in a dress. I will not be sharing any details about the dress and only a few close people know which dress I selected. Everyone else in my life, including you guys will just have to be surprised on my wedding day and when I finally get around to sharing a post about the dress after we get married. Anyways, we went dress shopping in Atlanta with my mom and sister. My future mother in law and sister in law were also supposed to attend but unfortunately neither of them were feeling very well and were unable to attend. We did FaceTime with them during the whole process of trying on dresses though so we definitely made sure to include them as I am very close with both of them! 

Inspiration for My Bridal Shower

 Hey Guys!

So today's post is another wedding post and it is the inspiration for my bridal shower! This won't be happening until January but like I've said before I will be home for a few weeks in September and I want to try to get as much planning done and decorations made so I'm not leaving it all to my mom and sister to have to do. And I know technically I'm not really supposed to do that but I feel really bad when people do things for me so I have to help out! Also, I kind of feel like it's my bridal shower and since my parents are paying for everything I feel like the least I can do is help with some of the heavy lifting type work.

My Summer/ Fall 2022 Travel Plans

 Hey Guys!

So I wanted to talk a little bit about my upcoming travel plans! You all know how much I love to travel and go on vacation! lol Except most of the places I am going to will not be new so I don't really count it as traveling so much, just more going back home. 

Planning our Wedding

Hey guys!

So I wanted to talk a little bit about our wedding planning experience so far! I will definitely be doing a lot more posts on this topic now that we have a venue and a date picked but I wanted to talk about everything that happened up until we got to that point. 

Living in Grand Forks, North Dakota

The outside of our apartment building

Snow shortly after I arrived

The snow melting a week later and a view of the field across from our apartment

The pretty skies after the sunset

Hey Guys!

Currently I am residing in Grand Forks, North Dakota and I wanted to do a post about living here. I recently moved here in April of 2022 and I will most likely be here until April of 2023. And why Grand Forks, ND you ask? Well my fiancé is stationed here with the Air Force. I probably won't be saying much more than that or be using his name a lot due to the nature of his job and other things but after 3 years of being in the Air Force he was finally able to move off base and after us being in a long distance relationship those entire 3 years we decided that we wanted to be together. To be honest, I really struggled with this a lot! I grew up in a Christian household going to Church every Sunday and living together before marriage was something I never really pictured myself doing. Granted, I pictured myself getting married at 25 and buying a house and having a perfect career, and life just being absolutely magical. I never imagined to fall in love with someone 5 years younger than me, who joined the Air Force and moved away only a year and a half into our relationship. 

I don't really have anything to justify my choice other than it was a choice that I made for myself. Ultimately it came down to I didn't want to be away from my best friend and the love of my life anymore, oh and by the way in case you missed it, we're engaged now (but that will be for another post)! We had been away from each other for 3 years already and even though I thought we were going to get married much sooner into our relationship, you can't make someone get married when they aren't ready. Marriage is kind of big a deal. Both of our parents have been divorced and are on their second marriage. Thankfully these ones have worked out much better for them this time around. We both just want to ensure that this is it and that we want to spend the rest of our lives together which so far the answer is yes we do! 

Anyways, onto my experience of living here so far. I was born and raised in Florida and have lived there my whole life. I had always wanted to move away from Florida because dealing with snowbirds is very tiring! The traffic is just absolutely awful during season and unless you don't really have to leave your house very often it's not fun to deal with. With that being said, I never in a million years would have thought that the place I'd be moving to someday when I pictured myself finally moving somewhere outside of Florida would be North Dakota. I had always planned on it being New York City but if you have read my previous posts then you know I chickened out of moving there after college because I didn't want to move so far away from my family. Well the joke was on me because I moved even farther away from my family, about 2,000 ish miles away from my family. When I was younger I could also picture myself moving to either North Carolina or Tennessee. I absolutely love vacationing in both of those states and I just think that it would be so peaceful to move to one of those states. Also, shortly after my fiancé started dating we talked about moving to Massachusetts because that's where he is originally from. He didn't move to Florida until he was a Sophomore in high school. 

I have been here since about April 9th, 2022 so in total I've been here for a little over a month. I say that because about 2 weeks after getting here I left on a 17 day long roadtrip with my parents who flew up to Minneapolis and we drove around visiting different National Parks for my moms birthday! We also drove back down to Florida to go to Disney for one day, on my moms actual birthday! Yes we are that Disney obsessed! I will do a few posts about that trip as well later on. We visited some very cool places that I will talk about in more detail. Anyways, the only conclusion I have come to is that I'm ready to move back home! My fiancé has a little less than a year left and I am definitely counting down the days. Our #1 goal is to make it back home but we really have no idea where we will end up because it all kind of depends on where my fiancé is able to get a job. The main reason he joined the Air Force was because they pay for all his IT certifications that he needs to get a job once he gets out plus they offer gaining experience as well. 

Thankfully there are IT jobs pretty much everywhere but we also looking at which jobs pay the most and offer the best benefits because we both have this goal of retiring earlier than average person. So we kind of plan on living a somewhat frugal lifestyle to gain a higher savings for retirement. We both want to be able to spend as much time at home with our future children as possible and also be able to travel the world more. Once he gets closer to getting out he will primarily be searching for jobs in the Lee County area and then if nothing is panning out there the goal is to end up somewhere in Florida because at least we would still be in the same state as our families. There are a couple other states that he has been looking at as well but if we end up in one of those states, it will most likely be temporary until he gains enough experience to be able to relocate back to our hometown in Florida. 

As far as where we live, we live in a very nice 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment on the second floor in a very nice area but honestly there is nothing to do here besides drinking and staying indoors. Two things I'm not very good at. Since I don't really have a job, I don't really leave the house much and fiancé leaves the house every day to go to work and on the weekends he struggles with wanting to leave the house. I definitely don't blame him. When I worked full time I loved getting my errands done first thing in the morning only to come back home and spend the rest of the day just relaxing in comfy clothes and watching a movie. We're both very much homebodies but at the same time I grew up in Florida, going or doing something every weekend. I'm not much of beachgoer but the typical Floridian goes to the beach on the weekends. The land here is very flat, I'm pretty sure it's flatter than Florida even and there are barely any trees. It kind of blows my mind and I've been visiting here since 2020. Also the sun does not go down until like 10 pm and it rises at like 5:30 am. It is all very weird and it definitely has been hard to adjust my sleep schedule. I am a morning person but with the sky still very bright I have a hard time getting tired in the evenings and wanting to fall asleep early. 

My fiancé's sister and her boyfriend recently came to stay with us and we had a wonderful time hosting them. Neither of them had ever been to North Dakota so at least they got to cross that off their list. We showed them around town, the base that my fiancé works on, and we went out one night to check out a few of the local bars/breweries. It was a lot of fun and we can't wait to have more visitors. My fiancé's parents are coming in about a week and we are very excited to have them as well. We have a ton of stuff planned to do with them and it should be a lot of fun. One thing for sure is that the trips are never long enough but we definitely enjoy getting to spend any and every second with our loved ones.

I think that pretty much sums up my experience so far but I will definitely keep you guys posted on how things are going! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph

April Life Update 2019

Hey guys,

Sorry to leave you in the dust! I absolutely did not mean to take the entire month of April off, it just kind of worked out that way. I had a pretty busy, stressful, and challenging month of April. I went out of town a couple of weekends. Planned a few things with some friends and some family members. But the biggest thing for me in the month of April was saying goodbye to my boyfriend who left for basic training for the Air Force. He left on April 8th and his basic training started on April 9th. He's been gone for almost a month and it has been a kind of sad month for me. I thought I was going to be able to handle well because I grew up with my dad being in the military and always coming and going. But it's a different feeling when it's the person you are in love with. We chose not to say goodbye because obviously it wasn't goodbye, we chose to say see you in June which is when his graduation from basic will be. My whole family and his whole family are taking a trip out to Texas to be there and support him on his graduation day. I am seriously looking forward to this day so much.

Anyways, since he's been gone, I've written him a letter pretty much every day so far. If I wasn't able to write him a letter one day I made up for it by writing two the next day! I have also sent him about 4 cards now as well just to help lift his spirits during this challenging time for him. I have also been sending him a picture or two with every letter or card I send him. I have this little printer that prints out 2x3 photos, which is like the perfect size because he can just keep them in the envelope and look at them when he's missing home! 

Also during the month of April, we took our annual trip to the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival to celebrate my mom's birthday! We had such a great time and I look forward to this trip every year! I don't think it will ever get old. I hope that we continue on the tradition for many years to come! I'll probably write a blog post about it later. I know I say that about a lot of things but I really do plan on writing the blog posts I talk about I just have to figure out when to fit them all in. There are seriously only so many hours in a day and they seem to just fly by. Except during the month of April lol where everyday seemed to be two days long or longer. 

My sister and I also met up with some friends at SeaWorld, which was a lot of fun! We got to ride some fun roller coasters and their new water raft ride which broke down on us at least 3 times in an hour and a half long period. It was crazy! We don't really go to SeaWorld that often so it was nice to be able to go and catch up with our friends and their adorable baby! I might write a blog post about that too lol, I took quite a few pictures and definitely could share my experience because it was an interesting one! 

I celebrated Easter with my family and then had dinner with my boyfriends family and it was so much fun being able to catch up with everyone. I have a lot of little cousins and it's such a great experience being able to watch them grow up and celebrate holidays with them! It was hard celebrating the holiday without Zach but there will be many more in our future and I can't wait for all of them! 

I also went to two concerts in the month of April, I went and saw Kelsea Ballerini and then we volunteered at the NewsBoys and Michael W. Smith concert, which all in all was a good experience. I actually complained like the whole time we were there because we had to get there sooo early and then we basically just sat around and did nothing for like 2 hours, it was very annoying. I am a huge fan of not wasting time so that's what really bothered me. The part we volunteered for was literally for 10 minutes during the intermission and then we were free to do whatever we wanted. Honestly, I am glad I didn't pay to see the show because I didn't really know most of the songs, I just knew the artists and a couple of their songs. I also just like going to concerts so I wanted to be able to say I saw them in concert but if I had known we were just going to be sitting there for 2 hours in the freezing cold stadium then I probably wouldn't have volunteered. But now that it is all over and I can kind of know what to expect for next time I would volunteer again as long as if it's not on a work night or right after we got back from a weekend away at Disney haha.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and I know it's not April anymore but I figured we're only a few days in to May so it still kind of works.

Talk to you soon! 

XO, Steph

Disney Trip March 2019

Hey guys,

Happy Monday! Or at least I hope it's happy! So I just wanted to do a post about my recent trip to Disney this past weekend! So funny story, we have had this trip planned since January but our original plan was just to stay one night, which was Saturday night. But somehow we managed to forget this and so the night before we left, my mom texted us and was like so guys we only have a hotel for Saturday night so we all got on our phones and tried to find another hotel to stay at! So we ended up staying at 2 different hotels. The first night was the Swan and Dolphin and the second night was at Shades of Green.

So on Friday, we ran around in the morning doing some errands and then we headed to Disney! Our first and only park of the day was Animal Kingdom! When we got there it was a little after lunch time so we headed for Pandora and grabbed some food. While we were there we only ended up riding 2 rides and watched one show. We rode the safari ride, which is something we pretty much have to ride every time we go and then we rode Dinosaur, which is also a favorite of ours. The show that we watched was the "Up! A Great Bird Adventure" show. We had never seen this before because it's fairly new so we figured we would give it a try! Also we waited till like the very last minute to book fastpasses so there wasn't much left! At this point we pretty much just go to the parks to enjoy them and walk around, take in the sites, and try some new food.

 

After we left Animal Kingdom we went to our hotel to go check in. We were trying to decide if we wanted to go to another park but we ended up just relaxing at our hotel and then we walked to the Boardwalk to find dinner. We were going to try a restaurant but by the time we got down there it was like 8 and the waits times were awful so thankfully we found a quick service place and I got a corn dog and some Mac n cheese bites, which weren't really that tasty. After that stuck around to catch some fireworks and then headed back upstairs to go to bed.

On Saturday we woke up and headed to Magic Kingdom! Which was super packed! We rode our 3 rides that we had Fastpasses for there which were, Jungle Cruise, Pirates, and Haunted Mansion. We also took a ride on the People Mover and on the Steamboat to help pass time in between our Fastpasses. We ate lunch while we were there too and then at around 3-ish we headed to check in out our second hotel for the weekend! We stayed at the Shades of Green which is a military sponsored hotel. It's located on Disney property but they are not managed by Disney. You do still get some of the perks such as Extra Magic Hours and they also have a bus that will take you to the parks.

After we hung out at the hotel for a little bit we changed into some warmer clothes because it was supposed to get a little chilly in the evening and then we headed to Epcot. We ended up eating dinner here which consisted of a variety of things. Currently the Flower & Garden Festival is going on which means that they have different booths set up selling extra food than they normally sell. This is something that they do at each of their festivals and each festivals get something a little different. We ended up eating at 2 different booths and the first one was the booth in Canada. We had some steak, which was pretty good and my father had scallops as well.

We then made our way around the different countries checking out the different booths seeing if there was anything else to eat and by that I mean if there was anything else I wanted to eat since I'm such a picky eater. We stopped at the booth in Morocco and we had some chicken kebabs with dried fruit couscous. I shared with my dad and he ate the couscous and I ate the chicken! Next we ventured to Japan because we thought it was going to rain and we would hangout in their really large store that they have there but instead we ended up searching all over for the bathroom and discovering the cutest little quick service place that sold Ramen! It was really good food and I highly recommend it! Plus it's so hidden and absolutely adorable! I would say I'm shocked I didn't know it existed but I feel like we either learn or discover something new about Disney every time we go!

Next, came the rain and so we took cover in Germany. After it had slowed down a little we went and got dessert at Werther's in Germany and I had a caramel chocolate covered s'more. It was very delicious! Then we headed to Norway to see how long the wait would be for Frozen which said about an hour but  I believe we only ended up waiting about 45 minutes so that was nice. While we were at Epcot we also rode Journey into the Imagination with Figment! That was the first thing we did when we got there because we had a Fastpass. We thought about trying to get another one but once you make it to the World Showcase it's not easy to get back to the part of the park that has all of the rides.

Once we got off Frozen we then decided it was time to leave. But before we could do that we had to get our passholder magnets and do some shopping of course! My mom bought one of the Spirit Jersey's that's for the Flower and Garden Festival this year and then my sister and I bought the Tervis Tumblers which we buy pretty much every year. My mom also bought a couple mugs and I bought one as well! Once we got all of our errands done then we decided to head back to our hotel and call it a night!

On Sunday we got up and we were going to head to Hollywood Studios for extra magic hours but I didn't pack enough warms clothes so we didn't end up going. We ended up grabbing breakfast at the hotel and then we headed to Disney Springs. We ended up just walking around and taking in some new stuff that opened and then we did some shopping at Sephora! I haven't really shopped at Sephora  a few years and I've really been craving a good shopping spree. I didn't really do a spree per se but I did spend almost $200 so that's a lot for me especially because I've been trying to watch what I spent all of the time so I can pay off some debts and put some money in savings for trips and things around the house. After we finished at Disney Springs, we headed home and said until next month Disney!

Talk to you soon!

XO, Steph